How regulation came to be: Monongah
The United States at the dawn of the twentieth century was a nation transformed. The rural, agrarian nation of Jefferson's time and Jefferson's vision had embarked on a Hamiltonian evolution, the...
View ArticleHow regulation came to be: The Cincinnati Who concert tragedy (repost)
When the Who (part of them, anyway) play the Dunkin' Donuts Center in Providence, Rhode Island this coming Tuesday, February 26, 2013, promoters will be honoring tickets from a previous Who concert...
View ArticleHow regulation came to be: The Truman Highway Safety Conferences
There’s a factoid I once saw… Before I go too far, though, perhaps I should explain ‘factoids’ for the younger crowd. In the days before computer technology and publishing software made it possible to...
View ArticleThe perpetual infancy of humankind: Echoes of the Triangle, 2012
Sadly, it’s not history from March 25, 1911:Witnesses said the workers, mostly women, ran for safety as the fire engulfed the plant but were unable to get through narrow exits. "Many jumped out from...
View ArticleHow regulation came to be: The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act
I saw G__ on a number of occasions, though I never formally met him face to face. He frequently drove by our house when he escaped the Chicago area, where he lived most of the time, for his “retreat”...
View ArticleHow regulation came to be: Pasteurization
I never met Clifford. No one in my family alive during my lifetime ever did, save for my grandmother. But if she remembered him, if she harbored any dim, shadowy two-year-old's memories of Clifford,...
View ArticleHow regulation came to be: The Buffalo Creek Act of God (repost)
This is a repost of a diary I wrote in 2010. Today marks the fortieth anniversary of the Buffalo Creek, West Virginia dam collapse that killed 125 people, many children, on a rainy Saturday morning in...
View ArticleThe Illinois Policy Institute -- now I see the light
I diaried a few weeks ago about the LTE exchange I had with the Illinois Policy Institute, one of thirty-some state-level, American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC)-affiliated organizations pushing...
View ArticleOh, it's on!
Late in December, the daily newspaper that lands on my doorstep each morning, the Bloomington (IL) Pantagraph ran an editorial highlighting a policy paper by the Illinois Policy Institute titled Still...
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Whodunit?
Okay, I admit I am not the most observant person walking the planet. I'm probably not far removed from the absent-minded-professor -- sans the "professor" part in both credentials and education -- who...
View ArticleHow regulation came to be: Bhopal
When Mrs. d and I bought our first house in the late seventies, a run down farmhouse out in the country about a mile east of town, it seemed as if we had scarcely signed on the dotted line when it was...
View ArticleParklands Foundation - Merwin Preserve (Photo Diary)
Parklands foundation is a private, non-profit organization that has protected and preserved over 3200 acres of woodland along the Mackinaw River through Tazwell, Woodford, and McLean counties in...
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How regulation came to be: The Hartford Circus Fire
Our little town held its annual fall festival the week after Labor Day. It's a strictly small town affair, featuring a carnival with antiquated rides, enticing only to the little kids. There's also...
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WHY regulation comes to be: Death in the Cornfields
It just breaks your heart.TAMPICO [Illinois] – Two 14-year-old girls were electrocuted Monday morning in rural Tampico, and eight others were hurt in the accident that happened while they were...
View ArticleHow regulation came to be: The Tylenol killings
In Elk Grove Village, Illinois, early on the morning of Wednesday, September 29, 1982, twelve-year-old Mary Kellerman, like thousands of schoolchildren on any given day, awoke complaining of a sore...
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How regulation came to be: The Memphis Yellow Fever Epidemic -- Part II
The boat was to tarry at Memphis till ten the next morning. It is a beautiful city, nobly situated on a commanding bluff overlooking the river. The streets are straight and spacious, though not paved...
View ArticleHow regulation came to be: The Memphis Yellow Fever Epidemic -- Part I
In late July of 1976, a number of attendees at an American Legion convention at the Bellevue-Stratford Hotel in Philadelphia suddenly fell ill with a mysterious, pneumonia-like illness that would...
View ArticleHow regulation came to be: The Triangle Shirtwaist Fire
It is difficult to know with any certainty what was going through the minds of the men gathered on Wall Street that day. It was not the kind of meeting for which minutes are taken or a written record...
View ArticleHow regulation came to be: Filling it up with Ethyl
It's been so long since I paid any attention, so long since it made any difference, so many years since I had any choice, that I didn't know, and had to run out the garage to check. On my 1995 Ford...
View ArticleHow regulation came to be: The Rehabilitation Act of 1973
I'm reclined back in the passenger seat, eyes closed, the slap of the wipers and the drumroll of road spray off the tires splattering against the floor pan providing background as Randi Rhodes...
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